Call for Papers: JAWS: Journal of Art & Writing

Issue 12.1: Utterings and Echoes: ‘The page lures the voice’ 

(After Rosmarie Waldrop, Reluctant Gravities, 1999)

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/jaws-journal-of-art-writing#call-for-papers

This issue of JAWS: Journal of Art & Writing is grounded in Sara Ahmed’s idea of citation as feminist practice and is concerned with how we work with and through the voices of others. Through close interrogation of citational tactics – broadly understood –  in art and writing, this issue explores how utterings, echoes, references, and source materials form the vocal foundations that determine, facilitate and/or suppress what is and can be said. We want to consider how citation and voice relate to language’s social function, such as in the chorus or in conversation, and to reflect on the vocalisations that underpin strategies for thinking and making with and alongside others. 

Utterings and Echoes: ‘The page lures the voice’ invites experiments with voices that lap at the edges of thoughts. The issue plays on ‘the mystery of riffing’, in which, through a series of associations with someone else’s work or words, we are led ‘somewhere by continually returning to the same place’ (Emily Ogden, On Not Knowing, 2022). We are also interested in how the voice might be ‘led astray’ in ‘the ripple-like effect of the echo…that is errant – movement and not just replication’ (Francesca Southerden, The voice astray, 2023), whether through quotation, translation, or more radical acts of appropriation, adaptation and plagiarism.

JAWS 12.1 invites submissions that explore the signals and connections between art, writing and the things we think and make with. When ‘our citations are dilations, not just memories’ (Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart, The Hundreds, 2019), we might make reference to a song, a snack, a work of art, a rumour, and a book of theory all in the same breath.

Submissions may relate in some way, but are not limited to:

Voice as citation and as medium:

How do we find our own voice while channeling the voices of others? How can formal experiments with citation function and fail within the parameters of academia? How can we approach sonority as a medium of voice and language? How and where might gossip or the overheard, the incidental and the anecdotal, be recorded? How do scripts, glossaries, bootleg copies, and fugitive voices - to name just some possible forms - operate?

Practices of citation beyond the verbal or the linguistic:

How do practices of assemblage, collage and overlay intersect with voice and citation? How are voices and echoes inscribed in the reflexes, gestures and mark-making of the visual? What kind of voice do appropriated, re-used or resourced materials speak in? And how can we attend to the quality and timbre of those voices?

Re-versioning and patterns of speech:

How can standard citational practices be disrupted, expanded upon and complicated? What does citation as a site of formal experimentation look like? How does citation manifest as personal or public? What conflicts arise in acts of conscious appropriation, homage, or imitation and influence, and how can we be open to the productive tensions involved in these boundary crossings? 

We welcome academic submissions and essays, practise-based submissions, hybrid and interdisciplinary forms, artist writing, and visual essays. 

We invite the following:

• Academic submissions and essays (up to 6000 words)

• Practice-based submissions, including hybrid, interdisciplinary and/or art writing (up to 5000 words) 

• Visual essays (up to 12 images)

• Interviews (up to 4000 words)

• Exhibition, book or event reviews (between 1000 and 3000 words)

More details on submission requirements and the journal theme can be found on the Intellect Books website.

Please upload your submissions as a Word processing document (not PDFs or Google Docs) via the 'Submit' button.

For any queries please email info@jawseditors.co.uk with the title ‘Submission: JAWS 12.1’. 

Deadline for complete submissions is 16 January 2026.

Submissions should use Harvard referencing and be formatted in Times New Roman, pt 12, but we are also open to submissions that take a more experimental approach to referencing and citation. Further information on formatting and the Intellect House Style Guide can be found here. All other forms of submission will be treated on a case to case basis, but you’re welcome to be in touch with the editors for clarification.